Chapter 19 — The Forgotten Dawn (Part I)
The wind over the broken plains sang like a thousand swords being drawn. Shards of divine glass floated in the air — remnants of Heaven's shattering. In the stillness between their glints, Li Shen walked barefoot through the dust of what was once the Sky Hall.
Every step left ripples of dark light beneath him; the Void itself bent, recognizing its emperor.
He no longer bled, though his robes were torn and burned. The black fire that marked the Codex's curse coiled around his arm like living scripture, each character shifting, erasing itself, rewriting.
"When the last dawn fades, memory becomes truth."That was the Thirteenth Verse — the one no Heaven dared to read.
From the horizon, a streak of gold descended. The air cracked open; a blade of light struck the ruined ground, and from its heart stepped Yan Rui — Li Shen's brother once, Heaven's war-bringer now.
"Li Shen," Rui's voice carried across the ruin, echoing through the storm. "Do you remember what we swore beneath the twin moons?"
Li Shen did not answer at once. His eyes reflected the fractured sky — one half gold, the other drowned in shadow. "I remember," he said softly. "We swore to protect the world… until the world chose who was worthy of its light."
Rui raised the Heavenblade. "Then let Heaven judge us one last time."
Lightning tore the sky apart.
Their clash shattered the silence. Rui's golden aura burst like a second sun, divine sigils forming a halo around him. Li Shen moved through the dust, the Codex script spiraling from his arm like a storm of living ink. Each strike erased the laws that bound reality; every parry rewrote them anew.
The earth split, mountains bowed, and the heavens wept blood.
Rui's blade sang through the storm. "You've become what you feared — the unending void!"
"And you," Li Shen answered, "have become what you obeyed — the hollow light."
He extended his hand, and the Codex unfurled — pages of darkness filled with forgotten verses, glowing with silver fire. From within them emerged echoes of those they had both lost: their master, their comrades, and her — Mei Lian, the woman whose sacrifice sealed the first Codex ages ago.
Her voice whispered through the air like a song half-remembered:
"You cannot destroy what was born from your love."
Rui faltered. His blade trembled.
For a heartbeat, Heaven and Void hesitated — not as enemies, but as brothers who had once shared the same dawn.
Then the sky broke again.
Li Shen raised his hand. The Codex flared, each word pulsing like a heartbeat. "If memory births truth," he whispered, "then let truth rewrite Heaven."
He vanished into the storm. Rui followed, and their battle moved beyond sight — two silhouettes carving destiny into the horizon.
Chapter 19 — The Forgotten Dawn (Part II)
The world hung in silence — then screamed.
Li Shen and Yan Rui tore through the ruins like twin storms of destiny. With each strike, heaven trembled; with each parry, the void roared in defiance. The remnants of celestial palaces fell into nothingness, their dust turning into stars that died before they could shine.
Between them, the air itself could not decide what to be — light or darkness.
Rui's aura burned gold, pure and blinding. Every motion of his blade carried the weight of ten thousand divine decrees. Behind him stood the shadows of past Immortals, drawn from Heaven's will. Their voices rose in a chorus:
"Restore the balance. Erase the heretic."
Li Shen raised his arm, and the Codex answered. The pages of the void fluttered open, black verses spilling like blood from a wound in the world. From their depths emerged another chorus — not divine, but mortal: cries of forgotten warriors, scholars, lovers, beggars, all who had been erased by the gods' perfection.
"Remember us."
The two armies collided — echoes of Heaven and Void clashing across eternity.
At the center, Li Shen and Yan Rui met again. Their blades crossed; sparks fell like meteors.
"You speak of memory," Rui hissed, eyes burning. "But memory is what traps us. Don't you see? Heaven erases so we can begin anew!"
Li Shen pushed forward, the Codex blazing in his grasp. "And who gave Heaven the right to decide who forgets?"
Rui snarled and unleashed a strike called "Judgment of Dawn." It split the world in half — light consuming shadow, creation consuming oblivion.
Li Shen was thrown back, his arm nearly torn apart. Black fire poured from the wound, writhing like serpents. The Codex wavered in his grasp — its pages trembling as if resisting him.
And then he heard her voice again.
"Do not fight the Codex, Li Shen. Become it."
Mei Lian's spirit appeared before him — ethereal, her form woven from silver mist and starlight. The pendant she once gave him glowed against his chest, the only piece of her that had survived the centuries.
"You sealed the Codex with your life," Li Shen said, his voice breaking. "Why return now?"
"Because you are still fighting what you already are." Her eyes were soft, sad. "The Void does not destroy, Li Shen. It remembers everything Heaven chooses to forget. Every soul, every tear, every lie."
He bowed his head, trembling. "Then what am I to do?"
"Write the final verse," she whispered. "Not as Heaven commands… not as the Void desires… but as you remember it."
Rui appeared behind her apparition, blade raised high, fury blazing through him. "You speak to ghosts while the world burns!"
He struck. The blade cleaved through her image — and for a breathless instant, light scattered across the plain like shattered moonlight.
Mei Lian's voice lingered as an echo:
"The dawn only forgets when the heart chooses to."
Li Shen's aura erupted. The Codex merged with his body; the pages fused into his veins. His eyes turned silver-black, pupils swirling with endless script.
Rui stepped back, realizing what he had done. "No… you can't—"
Li Shen lifted his hand, and the world bent.
The air froze. The divine army vanished, erased from existence as if rewritten out of the story itself. Even Rui's light began to flicker.
"You called me heretic," Li Shen said quietly. "But I am not the Void's master. I am its memory."
The ground beneath them dissolved into endless darkness. Only the two brothers remained, suspended between worlds — one shining like a dying sun, the other burning like a living abyss.
Rui lowered his sword. "Then end it, brother. If this is the dawn you wish to remember…"
Li Shen's expression was unreadable. "No. This is the dawn I will rewrite."
The sky tore open. Above them, the Thirteenth Verse appeared in glowing symbols — the one verse that neither Heaven nor Void had ever been able to complete.
Li Shen stepped forward, his voice steady, resonant, divine and human all at once:
"The Forgotten Dawn is not the end… it is the memory of beginnings."
The Codex answered.
Reality convulsed — not breaking, but rebirthing. Every star reignited; every lost soul returned in a single flash of remembrance.
And Li Shen, the man once cursed, stood at the center of creation's rewrite.
Chapter 19 — The Forgotten Dawn (Part III — Finale)
The void trembled like the breath of an awakening god. All around, fragments of existence swirled in chaos — mountains floating upside down, rivers running backward through the stars, and suns folding into themselves like dying blossoms.
At the center of it all stood Li Shen, his hair streaming like ink through the wind of eternity.His body was barely flesh now; script and soul intertwined, glowing with the radiance of the rewritten Codex.
The Thirteenth Verse hung in the air above him — incomplete, waiting.
Across from him, Yan Rui knelt, his armor shattered, the Heavenblade dim. Yet his eyes, once blazing with divine fury, now held only clarity — and sorrow.
"Brother," Rui said quietly, "I see it now. Heaven feared the Codex not because it could destroy… but because it could remember."
Li Shen's voice echoed, layered with a thousand tones — mortal, divine, eternal. "The Codex was never meant to unmake creation. It was meant to remind it of what it forgot: mercy."
Rui lowered his head. "Then finish it. End Heaven. End me."
Li Shen stepped closer. The void beneath him rippled like water touched by moonlight. He reached out his hand, and Rui's sword dissolved into dust — its divine essence returning to the fabric of the world.
"I will not end you," Li Shen said softly. "I will remember you."
He placed a hand on Rui's forehead. For a brief, eternal moment, memories flooded through them both — childhood under the ancient plum tree, their master's laughter, Mei Lian's song drifting on spring wind, the promise they made under twin moons: to protect the world, even from itself.
Tears traced paths down Rui's face. "Then let this be the dawn we could not protect."
The Thirteenth Verse began to write itself, glowing symbols spiraling around them like falling stars.
"When Heaven forgets, and Void remembers—""—let the two become one, and call it life."
A light without beginning or end burst across the void.
It wasn't blinding, nor cold. It was warmth — pure, simple, human warmth.The kind Mei Lian once carried in her smile.
The shattered heavens mended. The rivers of memory flowed once more. Souls long erased stirred from their eternal sleep — not as gods, not as mortals, but as both.
The Codex closed, its pages no longer black, but translucent — filled with the light of every life ever lived.
Li Shen stood upon the remade dawn, the world's horizon reborn in gold and silver mist. His body began to fade, the verses peeling from his skin like petals returning to the wind.
From behind, a voice whispered — neither ghost nor dream, but truth itself.
"You've written it, Li Shen. The world will remember."
He smiled faintly. "Then I can finally rest."
Yan Rui's figure stood beside him, no longer divine, no longer fallen — simply his brother again.
Together, they faced the new sun rising over creation.
"There was no Heaven. There was no Void. Only memory — and the man who chose to remember."
The light embraced them both.
And the Void Codex closed.